Best Hangout

Epic Café

When you need a little tea and sympathy: Epic Caf is Tucson's best hang-out

READERS' PICK: You'd think with a name like "Epic" this café would have a gigantic ego, like a '70s rock group whose stage entrance is clouded in a puff of smoke as they descend from the ceiling, and whose alleged "coolness" transcends any singing ability. But this little neighborhood café is cool. Sit long enough and smell all those baked-on-the-premises pies--at once sweet and garlicky. What wafts through the airy space even more ubiquitously are the overheard conversations, the eavesdropped lives of other café denizens. A microcosm of Tucson's spumoni-haired, pierced, tattooed, hippie, anarchist, professorial readers, thinkers, writers and gazers, Epic is the place to see and be seen. Even if you're new to town, you'll recognize someone here and she'll be sitting at her usual spot on the green vinyl couch in the back, reminiscing about an Earth, Wind and Fire concert she went to in 11th grade.